As the two the presidential candidates prepare for the first debate, Romney finds himself between a rock and a hard place. Obama is dealing with the same rock, but unlike Romney he lacks a similar hard place.

The rock is the apparently small number of actual undecided voters, maybe as little as 2%. This means to make significant gains in the poll, one has to go after the swing voters. Romney is not going to pass Obama in places like Florida and Ohio just by grabbing all of the undecideds (many who could very well not vote at all). He has to convince those who have tentatively leaned toward Obama at the moment to change their mind and swing over to him.

I think it can be reasonably assumed that if someone is leaning toward Obama, no matter how tentatively, his or her politics is in large part socially and economically moderate. I think the line "no one left behind" uttered at the DNC resonates with folks of this constituency. While they want the economy to take off, and maybe even think "smaller government" has its place in the debate, they don't want wide-scale suffering in the short-term just to get the economy rolling again.

In other words, these voters may first think of their own pocketbook, but their concern for their neighbors is not that far behind.

Romney's hard place is that in order to appeal to these people he has to make promises and outline policy choices that will alienate a sizeable number of those in his party. This was all too evident when he stated the other Sunday there were parts of Obamacare he would keep. He was attempting to reach out to those swingers and the backlash he suffered from his party was so swift he was taking it all back the next day.

Ron Reagan hit the nail on the head perfectly the other night when he said that while most presidential candidates shape the party into a reflection of themselves, Romney has allowed the party to shape him into a reflection of the party. And the Republican Party as everyone knows around here has become quite conservative, embracing an ideology and worldview that does not appeal to those who would consider leaning toward Obama let alone having already leaned Obama's way.

The success of the DNC was in large part that it amped up the party faithful while allowing Obama to go for the center in the hopes of pulling a few of those who have tentatively swung to Romney for the moment.

Romney's decision is whether during the debate he seeks to amp up the base in a way he failed to do during the RNC and hope their GOTV efforts are enough (2000 Bush in Ohio strategy) or go for a hail mary pass for the center of the field that he can be persuasive enough that for ever 1% of the base he loses, he picks up 2% from the moderates.

There is little in Romney's past performances that indicates he has the personality and showbiz chops to pull such a performance off. It is likely he will triple down on the conservative ideology. The most likely outcome will be that hardcore base of the Republican Party will find out just unappealing that ideology is to those in the middle of the political spectrum.

Comments

You have more than a point here Trope.

The dems have come together; and I believe they have come together out of sheer fear.

Fear of losing their vote, fear of losing their SS and Medicare, fear of losing all union rights (regardless of Rahm), fear of losing more money in taxes for the Middle Class, fear of losing condoms for chrissakes!

Supposedly that is what the repubs are trying to do. Muslims and socialists are ruling this nation!

But Birthers do not have any love at all for Mitt.

Teabaggers have no love for Mitt.

'Reasonable repubs' have no love for Mitt.

I know they all hate my President.

But somehow, at least at that convention, dems were in locked-step--at least ignoring the Israel/God plank.

Just as an aside; watch Mitt walk up on the stage to the dais and then watch Barry walk on that same stage to the dais.

Mitt has a stick up his arse; I know this sounds ad hominem but he really is the robot all these blogs and articles talk about. He really does not really know how to walk.

in 2000, the Repubs benefited from the "i'll vote for the one I would rather have a beer with" and 2012 the Dems benefit (although it would be a microbrew). Can you imagine in a similar situation as below - Obama keeps his cool.

One of the things Obama has been fine tuning since 2007 is how to be himself and not play into cultural memes about black men. It is unfortunate, but he cannot be the "angry black man" - politically speaking. Over the past four years, he has settled into his role as President and Commander in Chief, and now is letting his more personal side come forth. I really liked his quip in Vegas about how the Repubs' answer to everything is tax cuts - want to lose some weight, put a little kick in your love life, cut taxes.

Obama will be on Letterman this Tuesday. I can't imagine Romney on any of these shows without it being a complete disaster - his attempt to joke in an effort to connect with the unwashed masses is usually a mess. And what points he might score will only reinforce his moderate Republican and/or etch-a-sketch meme. Hence the rock and a hard place. All he can do is watch Obama banter with David and think what might have been.

A simple yet telling point is not whether those undecideds personally like Obama more than Romney, but do those undecideds perceive that Obama truly likes and cares more about ALL the people more so than Romney does.

Once again, the roof they have thatched together out of pure fraud and bullshit works for awhile...and then starts to collapse right on top of their (and Mitt's) victory parade.

Holy shit, there really were no WMD!
Holy shit, there really were no nukes, no mobile bio-labs, no secret bunkers, no anthrax-spraying drones!
Holy shit, they really are torturing people!
Holy shit, these incompetent fuckers really did let an American city drown!
Holy shit, Terri Schiavo!
Holy shit, they really are bigots!
Holy shit, they really do think the Earth is 6,000 years old!
Holy shit, they really still listen to Rush Fucking Limbaugh!
Holy shit, they really do hate science!
Holy shit, they really do think woman are chattel and vaginae are full of scary sorcery!
Holy shit, they really want to cut millionaires taxes again!
Holy shit, they really want to start another war in the Middle East!
Holy shit, now they want to outlaw birth control!
Holy shit, now they declare the Constitution protects 100 round drum magazines!
Holy shit, they really want to end Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security!
Holy shit, a gambling tycoon from Vegas is really running their foreign policy!
Holy shit, Mitt said corporations are people!
Holy shit, Ms. Mitt called us 'you people', and said Mitt isn't gonna tell us anymore about his taxes or his Swiss bank accounts!
Holy shit, Mitt said mentioning our troops at war was like a laundry list!
Holy shit, Mitt pulled a Palin and said Obama is paling around with terrorists!
Holy shit, after stonewalling Clinton for 8 years, accusing him of everything from murder to treason, and then impeaching him for trivia, now they are all cuddly with him!

It's not your daddy's (or my dad's) old GOP any more. That's for sure. Ol' Turdblossom came up with bringing in the ultra right holy rollers and such. It worked for a while. But now it kinda reminds me of that book about Frankenstein who created a monster and at first it was cool cause he could dust the high shelves and change the TV channel (they didn't have remotes back then) but then he started crashing around and destroying things and running amuck and the villagers blamed Frankenstein for it and came after him with pitchforks. It was funny because he was a real smart scientist but the monster was so dumb. anyhow...

Handing off that particular potato to Karl is a pretty slick move, Decider, but I remember when you were the one who went out, all by yourself, to gather some of that flock for your old man when he was running for President.

If Karl had tried that by himself, they would have skinned him alive and have used the pelt to protect their lawnmowers from condensation in the shed.

I still have yet to figure out why so many in the Christian right are prepared to vote for Romney. They believe abortion and homosexuality are sins (even though no one is making them participate in either - and Obama is participating in neither) yet so are lying and greed, and Mitt IS participating in both!

Search form

In the News

I have no idea or particular opinion about whether Garrison Keillor is guilty of anything, though it's always struck me as odd. But this somewhat but not quite illuminating article gums up the works a bit when taken as a part of a whole. The whole, of course, being accusations flying hither and yon with little if any explanation - even when they could stand some.

(THREAD) Yulya Alferova—ex-wife of Russian oligarch Artem Klyushin and a member of Trump's entourage in Moscow in 2013—is yet another witness who confirms, albeit inadvertently, Trump lied about what happened at the Ritz Moscow. The list of such witnesses is now very, very long. pic.twitter.com/BViILTZP67

On the hamster wheel of continual work, production and consumption, and Hebert Marcuse's.dreams.

[....] Marcuse did not live to see the 1980s, however [....] But his ideas lived on. In a 2004 essay for Harper’s magazine, for example, novelist and essayist Mark Slouka took to task the U.S. obsession with work [....]

One woman’s account of clandestine meetings, financial transactions, and legal pacts designed to hide an extramarital affair.....American Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, had paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for exclusive rights to McDougal’s story ...David Pecker, AMI CEO, describes the President as “a personal friend... he never printed a word about Trump without his approval.”

Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Was Trump diminishing the significance of the word treason, projecting onto the opposition (as he so often does) his own transgressions, by accusing Democrats of treason for not applauding him at the SOU?

Talking heads don't appear to have had much time to look at the details yet. Reporters are waiting on the formal announcement from Rod Rosenstein of the indictments. It is clear that they are directly related to Putin, not clear yet whether to the Trump administration.

A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment Friday against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities accused of violating US laws to interfere with US elections and political processes [....]

[....] in a blow to President Donald Trump, the GOP plan to enshrine his four-part immigration framework came the furthest of any proposal from reaching the 60-vote margin needed for passage, failing by 39-60. A competing bipartisan agreement got rejected, 54-45, after a furious White House campaign to defeat it, including a Thursday veto threat.

WASHINGTON — Steve Bannon, who served as President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller over multiple days this week, NBC News has learned from two sources familiar with the proceedings.

When a transgender woman told doctors at a hospital in New York that she wanted to breast-feed her pregnant partner’s baby, they put her on a regimen of drugs that included an anti-nausea medication licensed in Britain and Canada but banned in the United States.

Within a month, according to the journal Transgender Health, the woman, 30, who was born male, was producing droplets of milk. Within three months — two weeks before the baby’s due date — she had increased her production to eight ounces of milk a day [....]

President Trump endorsed a 25-cent gas tax hike to pay for infrastructure at a White House meeting this morning with senior administration officials and members of Congress from both parties, according to two sources with direct knowledge. Trump also said he was open to other ways to pay for infrastructure, according to a source with direct knowledge.